Elections Bill

David Davis Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a second reading to the Elections Bill, notwithstanding the need for legislation around digital imprints and some accessibility improvements for disabled voters which do not go far enough, because it infringes on the right of expression of the electorate by allowing the Secretary of State to unilaterally modify and select which groups are allowed to campaign during an election period, creates unnecessary barriers to entry for voting, makes the Electoral Commission subordinate to the executive, would serve to restrict the franchise and thereby reduce the overall number of people able to participate in any future UK General Election and does not make provision for the UK Parliament to match the devolved nations in Scotland and Wales by extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds and other disenfranchised groups.

It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate. Let me begin by quoting: the law governing elections is “voluminous”, “fragmented” and “extremely complex”, with some provisions

“dating back to the 19th century”.

I used that quote from the Law Commission’s 2016 report back in 2016, when I first became Labour’s shadow spokesperson for elections, a role that I still hold. Since 2016, it is like nothing has happened. The Government did not make any changes on the back of those recommendations, and the Elections Bill continues to make absolutely no progress on them or on the recommendations of many reports that have been published since. In fact, over the past decade the Government have failed to take any action to modernise our electoral laws or to close the loopholes that allow foreign money to flood into our democracy; this Bill actually makes that threat far greater and does not reduce it at all. I think the reason is very clear and those of us on the Opposition Benches have seen right through it: it is because these laws will lead to benefits for the Conservative party. In the Bill we have before us, the Government have not reached out for cross-party consensus as is typical for a Bill of this type which massively changes electoral law and deals with constitutional matters. It would be normal to see a Speaker’s Committee put together before such massive changes were brought forward. There has been no attempt by the Government to reach out for a cross-party consensus on a matter as important as our elections and our democracy.

This Bill is a huge missed opportunity to modernise our electoral law to bring it into the 21st century and try to encourage people to participate in our democracy. Indeed, our democracy is stronger when more people take part in it. In this Bill we see that the leaders would like to choose the voters. I believe that the voters should choose the leaders of their country, yet the flagship part of this Bill is very much about the leaders of this country choosing who are the voters.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I am a known critic of this Bill, but I will say to the hon. Lady that when I served through over a decade of Labour Government, they did not once consult the Opposition when they changed electoral law—not once.

[Cat Smith]

For years now, I have stood opposite the Minister responsible for the constitution and we have talked about many ways of improving our democracy. I had hoped that this Bill would contain some of the many topics that we have discussed across the Dispatch Box and in Committee, to expand the franchise to make it more inclusive. That might include spending the £120 million that will be spent on the electoral ID system to encourage registration to make sure that the millions missing from our electoral roll are included, making it easier for homeless people to register to vote—but no, none of that is included in this Bill, which would in fact serve to reverse decades of progress. I draw attention to the recent changes made by the Welsh Labour Government to expand the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds.

Some of the Conservative Members here today should consider the implications of this Bill for their constituents whose votes they perhaps relied on to get into this House, and how difficult it is for so many people in this country to have access to ID, because it is expensive—£80-odd for a passport and £43 for a driving licence. This is a paywall to the ballot box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Let me start with a comment relating to the question the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) raised about the duty on Governments to be more than fair when they are dealing with electoral legislation. Governments should not, even by accident, put in place electoral legislation that advantages themselves over their opponents. However, I do have to say to her that the most egregious example of that was under Gordon Brown, and the more sanctimonious the Minister, the worse the outcome sometimes. It is incumbent on us to make sure that we do not even accidentally disadvantage the other side in elections.

I want to focus on just one thing today, which is the issue of voter ID. The very fact that the phrase has “ID” in it will tell everybody I am against it—they understand that—but it is not for the conventional reasons. This is not an ID system with a database behind it; it is just an ID card that people have to present. Our country has over the centuries been different from other countries: we do not allow our policemen to come up to people and say, “Can I see your papers, please?” It is important to maintain that distinction between the citizen and the state, particularly when we are talking about the fundamental rights of the individual, such as the right to vote.

The Government quite rightly claim that voter fraud undermines our democracy—the battle on that has already occurred to some extent—but the primary voter fraud has been in postal votes, not in personation. We all know how it has occurred in communities up and down the country, and we should deal with it ruthlessly and prosecute. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who used to serve with me as a Minister in the Brexit Department, that the answer to his question is that the prosecution should happen in his constituency. That is what should happen, but let us be clear: since 2014 only three prosecutions have occurred. There have been 30-odd allegations but only three prosecutions, and that is out of many tens of millions of votes cast. So there have been 30-odd allegations, three prosecutions and zero election outcomes influenced; that is what we must bear in mind.

On the back of that, Ministers will want to introduce mandatory voter identification. It is an illiberal solution—unsurprisingly coming from the Cabinet Office, as that is what it always thinks up—in search of a non-existent problem. [Interruption.] I have at least some support on my side of the House.

The Government’s own research found that those with disabilities, the unemployed, people without qualifications, people who had never voted before and ethnic minorities were all less likely to hold any form of ID; those are the sorts of groups we are talking about. In two groups—the over-85s and the disabled—between 5% and 10% had no photo ID. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned that the introduction of voter ID may have a discriminatory effect on those groups and other protected groups, and the trial referred to by the Liberal spokesman, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), when 700 people did not vote as a result of photo ID being required, took place in a set of areas where the numbers of people in these groups were very low; it was basically the southern English test area, not central Bradford or wherever.

This is very serious. We are talking about quite a significant fraction of our population. There are 2 million people in the groups I have described who will have to be met by some ID system, and that must be balanced against three voter convictions. That is the problem we are facing.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend looked at schedule 1, which contains a very broad list of valid means of identification? I would be very surprised if anybody in the country today did not have one of them, and my right hon. Friend also knows that there is the provision of free ID from the local council.

[Mr Davis]

The point I would make is that I am quoting from Government research. I did not do this research; it is Government research. By the way, since my hon. Friend draws me to Government research, Lord Pickles, a real old pal of mine, did a study on this. I have read it and, to summarise, the conclusion was, “I can find no evidence of personation but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and of course even if it isn’t happening now it might well happen in the future.” It is the precautionary principle gone mad in the centre of our constitution.

The Government answer, as we have heard several times, is free photographic ID. Nevertheless, the Government’s own research again found that about 42% of people without the ID would not take it up. That is really very serious. These groups are going to be disenfranchised because they do not take it up, and they will turn up at the polling station and find that they are unable to vote. This is in pursuit of three convictions.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech thoroughly destroying the Government case for voter ID. Would he care to hazard a guess as to why the Government are pursuing this policy?

[Mr Davis]

This is where I differ from the hon. Gentleman. I think that the Government are trying to do their best. I do not think that this is a deliberate action, but I think that the pressure on the Government—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs, but listen: I lived through a Labour Government deliberately gerrymandering the system, frankly, so I do not want to take any lectures on that. I think that the Government are trying to do their best. They have the wrong idea in pursuit of a problem that does not exist, but they are nevertheless trying to do their best. But there is a greater—

[Geraint Davies]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. There is no evidence of gerrymandering. That is outrageous.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

That is not a point of order. I really do not want the debate interrupted by points of order that are actually points of debate.

[Mr David Davis]

I will take another day to give lectures on points of order.

The simple truth is that there is a greater responsibility on the Government than on anyone else to do the right thing and to avoid errors working to their own advantage. That is what I am arguing here today. This voter ID scheme is an illiberal idea in pursuit of a non-existent problem, and that is what we need to address. We need to get rid of it, and that is what I will seek to do on Report.